ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged a multitude of actors and sectors to carry out collective actions to solve the dramatic global health crisis, reviving a recurring problem in the history of humanity: the coordination of actions, or the lack of it. Science has not been an exception: the unbridled competition of countries and pharmaceutical companies to generate vaccines and treatments reveals that, far from being resolved, research coordination continues to be an ongoing issue. This article aims at making a critical review of the attempts to coordinate science in the last 40 years, with particular interest in federal countries, more prone to dispersion, duplication, and gaps. A literature review made it possible to revisit coordination policies and instruments and culminates in a proposal to study science policy networks in search of a more detailed analysis of the actors in the research ecosystem.